by Daren Wang
Leander laughed nervously.
“Lelo’s daddy offered to pay for just that,” Vaness said. “Even offered to throw him a grand party at their big house. Was going to invite all kinds of fancy people from the city and…”
He stopped short when Leander shot him a hard glance.
“Tomorrow he gets to tell me what to do,” Leander muttered. “This is my party. Not his. Now where’s that rye?”
Hans produced a bottle, and Leander took a long pull.
“Speaking of your family, isn’t Mary coming?” Vaness asked. “At least we’d have our own sermonizer here.”
Leander shook his head and drank again, his face harder.
He had pled with his sister to come even as he loaded the sleigh that afternoon.
“I can’t leave the runaway,” she’d said. “And besides, I have no interest in spending my evening listening to those hateful, copperhead farm boys prattle on about Lincoln the tyrant,” she’d said.
“They’re my friends,” Leander had said. “And there’s not a one of them gives a damn about slavery, or who is president. You’re the one that starts in on that, every time.”
“What else should we talk about, Wordsworth or Melville?” she shot back. “Besides, am I supposed to show interest in the number of points on the buck someone killed last week?”
“That’s what the other girls do,” Leander said. “That’s why they have friends.”
She turned her back then and walked into the house.
Mary had never been like the other girls at the crossroads. They all seemed happy for a Saturday night at Wilhelm’s Corner House with the boys, but she always wanted something else. His friends all joked that she was hard-hearted, but he knew how much was behind her feined coldness.
He could never shake the image from their childhood of her plunging into the frigid creek trying to rescue a bawling fawn that had been swept into the spring rush. He ran along the creek, chasing the two thrashing figures, shouting and crying in fear. Mary finally caught up to the animal, only to have it kick her in the forehead and flounder out of her reach.
Only when she had lost sight of the lost animal did she turn toward Leander on the creek bank. She was crying for the loss of the creature and blood poured from the gash on her head, but the grief in her eyes turned to fear as the current pulled at her sodden coat and dress. She called out for help, but his own fear froze him where he stood as the water pulled her away from him.
She was under for long seconds and he did nothing but wail her name. The swift water carried her into the shallows where she found footing and pulled herself onto the chunked ice of the bank. Leander ran to her and she took him into her arms even as her body convulsed with the cold. Even now he flinched when he thought of the way he tried to squirm away from the iciness of her embrace.
He’d always been ashamed of that story, and had only told it to Hans. When the others joked about her, he felt like he should tell them, to let them know that in the end, she was the most sentimental of all the girls. But somehow, he never could.
Leander drained the last of the rye and called for another bottle. Edward pulled a flask from his coat pocket. Susie left soon afterward, and the others followed. By midnight, it was down to him and Hans again.
The two of them sat on opposite ends of a log in front of the fire. Leander threw more wood into the blaze and Hans put a small chunk of bacon fat in a long-handled, covered pan and set it over the fire.
Leander smiled when his friend drew a fistful of dried, multicolored corn kernels from his pocket and dropped them into the melted fat.
“Just like my mother used to make,” Leander said, as the smell of the popping kernels poured out from the pan.
“I remember,” Hans said.
“I’m staying out here tonight,” Leander said. “One last night.”
“I’ll stay with you,” Hans said.
He was pulling the pan from the fire when they heard the voice behind them.
“I thought this thing was going to go all night,” Harry said. “I thought there would be dancing girls and fireworks and marching bands.”
“Leander chased them away,” Hans said as Harry plopped onto the log between them. Leander handed him the bottle and mussed his hair.
“I’m sorry about Jep,” he said.
Harry hung his head. Leander wanted to put his arm around his friend, but thoughts of the runaway hidden away in his basement and the guilt of it held him back.
“That dog was the one stuck with me through it all,” he said.
“I know,” Hans said. “She was a good one.”
“She was the best,” Leander said.
“You been out tracking the runaway?” Hans asked.
Harry nodded.
“It’s pitch black,” Leander said. “How are you supposed to track anything?”
“I’m going to find the bastard,” Harry said, taking a long pull from the bottle.
“Any sign of him?” Hans asked.
“Found some blood on the creek bank, but the snow’s been coming down pretty steady, and I never tracked without Jep before. He’s back here somewhere, though. I’ll find him.”
He paused.
“Wilhelm says your sister’s hiding him,” Harry said, not looking at Leander.
“Wilhelm blames us for everything that goes wrong in the world,” Leander said. “Of course he thinks we’re helping.”
“She’s always going on about abolition this and the South that,” Harry said.
“It’s all talk,” Leander said, trying not to lie to his friend. Harry didn’t say anything else and they sat in the firelight, the sky clouded and dark overhead, munching the corn.
“What are you going to do in that big city anyway?” Harry asked.
“Wish I was here,” Leander said.
When the corn was gone, the three of them watched as the snowflakes drifted silently into the fading fire. When the bottle was empty, they retreated to the shack and crawled under old blankets and greasy pelts on cots they had built for themselves years before. Their legs dangled above the floorboards and their heads spun from whiskey, but they were together and they slept well.
When Leander woke in the morning, Harry was gone already, back to tracking the runaway. He walked Hans to the parsonage then returned home, where he sat at the kitchen table and drank coffee. Mary never sat still for very long unless she was reading, but she sat with him then for long hours, talking about nothing in particular. He loved how he could make his sister laugh when almost no one else could.
In the afternoon, he went to his room and packed his things into a steamer trunk and then he sat for hours looking out the window of the study while his father ran his fingers over columns of numbers and told him stories of the men he would be meeting in the big gray city to the west.
UNDERGROUND
We had to take off the fugitive’s leg this morning. Father and I held him down while Doc Pride sawed it off. I understand now how he could have bested Karl Wilhelm. He is nothing but sinew, and he fought like a madman, nearly throwing both of us off. Whatever it is that has carried him these many miles is still alive and strong. His fever was down by the evening, and I am expectant that his mind will return to him soon.
Last night Charlie Webster came for dinner, the third time this month my father has invited him. He ate two full bowls of stew and biscuits and it appeared that he declined a third only out of decorum. I don’t think he’s eaten anything at home but parched corn since Verona died.
I miss her so.
It is good to see him away from that farm that holds so much heartache for him. He’s been reading her books and came loaded with questions. It appears that Mr. Dickens may be the cure for what ails him.
My father announced at the table that he has arranged for all of us to attend the Presidential Ball next month downtown, that he had reserved rooms in the American Hotel where Mr. Lincoln will be staying as well. Even Charlie will join us.
He
seems to think that I am somehow willfully unpleasant to the men of Buffalo, and that if I just set my mind to it, I can charm them. He does not understand that I have done my best. I do not understand the rules, I am uncertain of the language these men in fancy clothes speak. I do not have the heart to endure another one of those grand affairs, not even for the chance to meet Mr. Lincoln. I am not sure how I will tell him, but I will not go.
—MARY WILLIS’S JOURNAL, JANUARY 20, 1861
Joe remembered little of his first days on the farm. There were flashes of the doctor’s saw, and screaming himself into oblivion, but nothing more.
The first clear thing he could recall was waking with a pain that felt like animals gnawing at the stump and fearing his teeth would break from the clenching.
He lay there for hours, enveloped in darkness, not knowing where he was, afraid to make a sound, with only the pain to let him know he was alive.
He knew what the future held for a one-legged, fugitive slave. He had seen other castoffs on the streets of Harpers Ferry, husks too used up to be any good, with dirty handkerchiefs spread on the ground in front of them, begging fruitlessly for a stray coin. He found himself wishing that he had not woken up at all, or that there was some way that he could end things right then.
When he thought he might finally go mad, she came to him, pushing away the heavy piece of furniture and letting in the light. She had a lantern and a bowl of broth, and she lay her cool hand on his forehead before she lifted his head and spooned the warm liquid for him.
He could barely croak his thanks, so she talked as she fed him. She told him her name was Mary and where he was and that as soon as he was healthy enough, she would take him down to the river where there were people who would help him cross to Canada.
The broth had a strange flavor to it, but all the food here was strange. The cornbread was blue, and she brought him a bowl of something called sauerkraut, which his mother would have thrown away as spoiled.
He could hear the voices of others in the house and their footfalls above the cellar, but they did not come down the stairs. For him, there was only Mary.
In the morning and then again at midday, she brought porridge and tea and she’d say little before pushing the heavy wardrobe back in place. The porridge had an odd sweetness, the tea had none at all. Sometimes he would sleep through those visits, and he would wake to find the tray next to him.
The evenings were different.
Once he got a little stronger, she would move him to the worktable in the cellar just outside the hole in the wall. There was all kinds of food stored in the cellar, and he loved the smell of them—barrels of apples and cider, and bundles of dried plants hanging from the rafters. He knew some of the herbs, others he did not. There was a snow-covered window at the top of the wall. It was often dark by the time she came, but sometimes there would be daylight and he might glance the blue sky through the bare tree branches.
He tried to ask her about her life, but she said little. She’d sit with him there and ask about the plantation.
He didn’t want her to pity him any more than she already did, so he tried to think of good things to tell her about Walnut Grove, but no matter where he started, he always ended up talking about Alaura.
He talked about how smart and beautiful she was, and how the two of them would take long walks after dinner each night and talk about what they’d learned that day, whether it be something Alaura had heard in the master’s study or something Joe had read in a discarded newspaper.
“You can read?” Mary asked.
Joe nodded. “We went to church every Sunday, and the preacher would say the chapter and verse before they read it out loud. Momma used to make a game to see how much of it we could remember, but she had something else on her mind. You see, someone had given her a Bible, and we went home and got that book out and we would try to find the passage and work out which words were which. The foreman, he found out, and he hardly left any skin on my mother’s back. He started in on me, too, but the old man stopped him before he got too far.”
He took a long drink from his glass.
“It nearly got us killed, but it changed everything,” he said. “I’d get the old man’s newspapers off the trash pile. It didn’t take me long to find out what the rest of the world was like. It’s against the law to teach a slave to read, but the old master liked to show me and Alaura off like trick ponies. His wife used to threaten to leave him every time I showed up and would stomp out of the room. Eventually, she did go away, though I can’t imagine that was the reason. Alaura said she went to Ireland. My sister, she’s the one. She’s so smart the old master has her take care of him, write letters for him and such. She’s pretty, too.”
He smiled. “She doesn’t look like any person you’ve ever seen,” he said. “She’s got different-colored eyes. One brown, one green. The old women back home say there’s something magic about her eyes, but to me, they’re just pretty.”
“What about your parents?” Mary asked.
“The master’s wife sent my momma away soon after they found out I could read,” he said. “Down to the sugar fields in Louisiana. She didn’t last long down there. The old man tried to make it better for me, though. I had my own little place near the sawmill. Alaura, she was just a little girl when Momma went away, and he built a little room for her in the house, where it was cooler than the fields, and she’d come see me at the sawmill in the night and we’d read together. Sometimes the old man would lend me out to other mills, and I’d get some of the money.”
“They let you keep it?” Mary asked.
“The old man would. He’d make a good deal for me,” Joe said. “I saved up five hundred and twenty-three dollars. I had enough money to buy my sister’s paper, but she wouldn’t go until there was enough for me, too.”
“Where’s your sister now?” Mary asked, afraid of the answer. “Did she run with you?”
He shook his head and rubbed his eyes.
“There was no time,” he said, going slow, trying not to choke on the words. “She was in the big house, and I couldn’t go in there. I was sure I was going to be caught that night, then whipped to death or strung up the next day.”
“You didn’t plan to run?” she asked.
He shook his head then paused, measuring her against the weight of the rest of his story.
“It was the money. Yates took it. I don’t know how he knew about it, but he tore apart my room until he found where I had it hid. Said I had no use for it. Same night he came back and woke me up. He was laughing and smelled like he’d been swimming in a whiskey river. He pulled out the pockets of his fancy trousers, said he lost all the money in a bet. Cockfighting.”
Even now, his eyes shone with fury.
“That money was the difference between Alaura being a slave and free woman, and he bet it on a damned chicken.” He spat. “I couldn’t help myself. I took up a big old rock and bashed him in the head. I ran, then swam, then ran some more. I could hear those dogs even across the Shenandoah. I just kept going.”
He looked her in the eyes, hoping she could somehow forgive him for leaving his sister behind.
“How could I take her with me?” he asked. “I was sure they’d get me in no time.”
His breath caught and he hesitated. His eyes drifted to the low ceiling and the bundles of herbs hanging there.
“There must be a way to get her free,” she said, but the worry on her face made him think she didn’t believe what she said.
She helped him back into the tunnel and left him alone to sleep.
He soon found himself wakeful for longer stretches, and she brought him some books. He read a story that started out about wine and ended with a man buried alive behind a wall of bricks. “At least I’ve got a lamp,” he muttered to himself before putting out the light and staring into the dark.
Next she brought him a book about a man who goes alone into the woods and makes a little place for himself to live. He read that one again a
nd again, and the pond, the green meadows, and the little shanty started to show up in his dreams.
He asked for paper to write a letter to Alaura. He knew he could not send it, but he wanted to put his thoughts down. He started over and over again, trying to give her reason to hope, trying to make her feel safe, trying to say that they would see each other again, but the words all felt like lies, and he crumpled the paper and threw it against the back of the wardrobe that blocked him away from the world.
YATES
John Yates Bell gazed with blank eyes out across the plantation’s winter-brown fields, his fingernails worrying the scab on his left temple until a bead of blood formed.
The doctor had scolded him, saying that the wound would have healed weeks ago if he would stop picking at it, but his fingers went to the wound whenever he thought of Joe the runaway.
And he could not stop thinking about Joe.
He was imagining him in some northern town, feted by the Yankees as another asset stolen from the rising Confederacy, when the voice of the runaway’s sister shook him from his reverie.
“Master Yates, your father wants you in his study.”
She was standing on the top step of the veranda, wearing a dark blue dress cut well for her lithe form. And always, there were those eyes. One green, the other brown. They were unlike any he had ever seen, and they were staring at him.
None of the other slaves dared even look him in the face, but Alaura always glared at him with contempt. He longed to beat the haughtiness out of her, to replace her arrogance with the respect and fear a darkie girl should feel toward her master.
He had tried to long ago, but his father had stayed his hand.
She had been younger then, maybe ten years old, but his father had already moved her into the house and made her his errand girl. Yates’s mother had left them just months before, moving back to Ireland.
While the other slaves worked in the fields under the hot sun, Alaura sat in the corner of his father’s study as he worked at his desk, fetching him bourbon or a glass of water, or as she had just done again, his son.